The Development of Strategic Culture in Terrorist Organisations

Terrorism studies has an enduring puzzle: how do terrorist organisations grow, persist and survive? Using the Japanese new religion Aum Shinrikyo as a case study, this thesis posits that three causal mechanisms—cultural transmission, social learning, and folklore—affect terrorist organisations’ survivability, success, or failure. Original contributions to knowledge include a new analytical theory of strategic subcultures in terrorist organisations, new tests using the qualitative methodology of process tracing, and a new causal analysis of Aum Shinrikyo’s initiatory, religious sub-system (which facilitated founder Shoko Asahara’s paranoid delusions, leadership elite deviance, and follower indoctrinability). A new research agenda is also identified.